Of the six players the Flames selected in this year\u0027s draft, not a single one of them is shorter than six feet.
Jaden Lipinski celebrates after being selected in the fourth round by the Calgary Flames during the NHL Draft at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on Thursday, June 29, 2023.While they all need to continue putting on muscle and adding a little weight, they definitely bring some size.As they sat on the outside looking in at the 16 teams who were playing in the post-season this spring, the Flames could clearly see that size matters.
“You watch the Stanley Cup playoffs and not that size is everything, but you see the teams that are having success and winning and size was a big part of it,” said Flames GM Craig Conroy. “If we could get bigger, that’s something we targeted. Even the last couple years but it just happened to work this year that the big guys that we really liked were there and we were able to get them.”
It’s not that the Flames don’t have any size already in their system. There are certainly a few taller players like Adam Ruzicka and Adam Klapka who you wouldn’t want to guard on a basketball court. Both guys come in well above the six-foot mark. But there are also a lot of highly skilled players who don’t exactly tower over opponents. Matthew Coronato, drafted in the first round in 2021, stands at 5-foot-10. Connor Zary, their first-round pick in 2020, is 6-foot, while 2019 first-rounder Jakob Pelletier is 5-foot-9.Article content
There are plenty of jobs for guys under six feet in the modern NHL. Important jobs, too, and both Coronato and Pelletier figure to be key pieces for the Flames going forward.“Skill, size, skating. They all need to get stronger, they all need to improve a little bit,” Conroy said. “But if you look at the draft and we knew it was going to be a good draft and the players I liked going in, to get players that we really like .
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